Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I wanted to peg some interest for a tournament I thought of last night in the midst of the fantastic DnT Tourney I had the pleasure of casually viewing this weekend while I cooked all day on Saturday.

Also just as a quick note I’m not necessarily back, but I plan on being around for Halloween and Wintersday, because I enjoy both of those events. The reason I’d like to do this is because I’m sincerely missing running community events and contests, as I’m lacking a community in D3 and other games (there just isn’t a community like GW2).

So the Pug Tournament. Here’s my idea and justification:

Things I was trying to consider:

• This Tournament would be semi casual friendly
• This Tournament would only require players to be the best player they can be, rather than relying on their guilds, friends, etc, in order to compete
• This Tournament would eliminate as much RNG as possible when putting teams together
• This Tournament would be run by the community, and volunteers, in order to keep things civil and light hearted
• This Tournament would have prizes, but also participation prizes to encourage anyone to participate
• This Tournament would use the GWSCR rules (Plus any additional that are added) and utilize community member judges and experts
• This Tournament would not attempt to be clever with format, rules, or anything of that sort and would likely stick with the format used by DnT in their latest tournament (which I felt was quite fair and successful).
• This Tournament would be timed around Christmas (but not ON Christmas) and timing would be decided based on a straw poll, survey monkey, etc.)

So the way I envisioned it was as follows:

1. A number of people sign up.
2. Using random number generators, a multiple of 5 participants from each region will be chosen to participate (If 31 NA folks sign up, 1 person would be placed as an alternate if any of the 30 members fail to show up, also I was thinking a sign up to be an alternate would be a great way for others to participate tentatively, especially community members unsure of whether they’d like to participate)
3. People can choose to sign up as the streamer. When choosing teams, the team leaders will be chosen from the pool of potential streamers. If there are not enough streamers, this will limit the amount of teams, so it is encouraged to stream by an additional prize of “MVP – Most valuable pug” that would be chosen among the streamers.
4. The teams will be chosen at random. When chosen, the teams have 15 minutes to prepare with their party before the first round begins.
5. The Initial round would be a Battle Royale style when each random team does the same path and the top 8, or 12, or however many depending on the format will continue on to duel it out with their random teams.

Potential requirements for participation:

I was thinking that while it should be casual friendly, it should not be so open that teams end up having entire groups of noobs (no offense to noobs of course!). So I was thinking a minimum requirement of Dungeon Master and a certain number of Hobby Dungeon Explorer Completions (Perhaps between 30 and 50?) as well as 2 fully geared level 80s of different classes.

Prizes would of course be based on community interest and involvement, it would be nice to have the kind of prize pool that DnT had graciously donated, but I am not going to be that optimistic.

Anyway… That’s my idea. Let me know what you think of it.

Hi Hi.

When you say tournament. Do you mean speedrun?

Also im *d*is*q*ualified from entering (DQ don quack get it ? get it?)in the discussion phase

DonQuack.9025:

Hi Hi.

When you say tournament. Do you mean speedrun?

Yes I think that is the best objective measurement.

As for the “I was thinking that while it should be casual friendly, it should not be so open that teams end up having entire groups of noobs (no offense to noobs of course!). So I was thinking a minimum requirement of Dungeon Master and a certain number of Hobby Dungeon Explorer Completions (Perhaps between 30 and 50?) as well as 2 fully geared level 80s of different classes.”

I dont think people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing(noobs) would even be in this area to sign up. I think the metric of what defines “noob” and not so “noob” needs a bit of detailing.
E.g. Ive ran all but 2 or 3 dungeons thus havent got the dungeon master, also meaning I havent got any hobby stuff. Even if I went and got the dungeon master I would still need to go and get the 30-50 hobby.

Nothing would prevent me and my pug team from specifically practicing those 2 or 3 dungeons so I am relatively proficient in them.

also at the same time I know people who have a hobby almost purely from running ac nonstop.

DonQuack.9025:

As for the “I was thinking that while it should be casual friendly, it should not be so open that teams end up having entire groups of noobs (no offense to noobs of course!). So I was thinking a minimum requirement of Dungeon Master and a certain number of Hobby Dungeon Explorer Completions (Perhaps between 30 and 50?) as well as 2 fully geared level 80s of different classes.”

I dont think people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing(noobs) would even be in this area to sign up. I think the metric of what defines “noob” and not so “noob” needs a bit of detailing.
E.g. Ive ran all but 2 or 3 dungeons thus havent got the dungeon master, also meaning I havent got any hobby stuff. Even if I went and got the dungeon master I would still need to go and get the 30-50 hobby.

Nothing would prevent me and my pug team from specifically practicing those 2 or 3 dungeons so I am relatively proficient in them.

also at the same time I know people who have a hobby almost purely from running ac nonstop.

Sure. But I just felt there should be some sort of metric. Dungeon Master itself doesn’t mean that much, and neither does Hobby. But I’m trying to put the bar somewhere in between totally casual dungeon runners and elite. I’d personally love to have the elite members of the community have an interest in joining…. but if they get a team with people who have literally never stepped foot outside of AC, that’s not going to be fun for them at all.

A better metric would be nice. But I don’t think there should be a total lack of requirements.

A pug tourney is something I’ve always been interested in, but wondered how you would make it happen.

To directly answer your question, yes. Here is one interested person.

I’ve been asked for clarification; by pug tournament I mean, groups are assembled randomly. So it’s possible for people of the same guild to be in the same group, but groups are not based on whether they are in the same guild.

So a group of 5 is chosen randomly from the pool of signed up players.

Ah that clears it up a bit. ty for clari.

I’ll be happy to help you with any advice you desire to make organizing it easier.

hybrid.5027:

I’ll be happy to help you with any advice you desire to make organizing it easier.

Any ideas on requirements on entry? (I’m at a loss for what could be a decent enough metric)

I too would be interested.
As for the requirements: How about answering some questions about the classes they want to participate with ingame?
Nothing is more annoying then a thief who doens’t know how to stealth the group without shadow refuge
Also i think it may be a good idea to make the partys not completely random, but with “guaranted” different classes.
For example: We have 3 Streamers and 3 Guardianplayers want to participate, so every group gets a guardian, etc.
That way no group will be at a total disadvantage just from the classes they have. I know that most players have more than one 80 they can play, so this situation is rather unlikely, but still noteworthy i think, as most may want to play with there mains, as they are best with them.

As soon as you make it a speedrun, you invite very skilled competitors such as the major guilds. In the face of [SC], [rT], etc., what pub group would want to compete? Even with RNG’d teams, you will get a lot of really really strong players entering, which will alienate players who might not be as good.

Imagine the stress if you’re a casual dungeoneer and get a group of super serious players by RNG and you can’t keep up. Now you’ve got teams eating themselves apart by their weakest links, really demoralizing that poor pub. I mean, hopefully we’re all pretty nice people, but when you want to win you want to push people and it’s frustrating when they just aren’t up to scratch.

I’d certainly enter, but I wouldn’t expect a revolutionary level of participation.

Artemi.1437:

I too would be interested.
As for the requirements: How about answering some questions about the classes they want to participate with ingame?
Nothing is more annoying then a thief who doens’t know how to stealth the group without shadow refuge
Also i think it may be a good idea to make the partys not completely random, but with “guaranted” different classes.
For example: We have 3 Streamers and 3 Guardianplayers want to participate, so every group gets a guardian, etc.
That way no group will be at a total disadvantage just from the classes they have. I know that most players have more than one 80 they can play, so this situation is rather unlikely, but still noteworthy i think, as most may want to play with there mains, as they are best with them.

Hm. I could quiz them. Haha. Not a bad idea!

My thought on classes is that… well. It’s a pug. When you don’t have a guardian, you adapt. This is why I added the more than 1 class requirement. I think that having at least that many options in a party would be fine, but of course if someone else has that fear, we can discuss ways of mitigating the problem.

Rising Dusk.2408:

As soon as you make it a speedrun, you invite very skilled competitors such as the major guilds. In the face of [SC], [rT], etc., what pub group would want to compete? This alludes to some of the reasons why the official [DnT] tournament had a really hard time garnering participation. If you structure it basically the same but call it a “pub tournament”, that doesn’t necessarily do anything if non-pubs can come in and clean house for big rewards.

Well… there likely wouldn’t be a full speed run party since party comp is based on RNG. those elite players would ideally be spread across the groups.

Edit: to your edit I could be being naive but if a person joins a tournament designed specifically for competing in a pug they can’t really complain when the group is not an elite guild and the run is not as organized as in their elite guilds.

Sorry, I did a lot of heavy editing to my post before I saw your response. Please reread!

Oh and in addition unsportsmanlike conduct like you’re suggesting in my care bear opinion would be grounds for that player being DQd. In my opinion. Though I do not think just one person (me) should be making those rules yet and would prefer more community feedback for that sort of situation.

:p

Lindbur.2537:

:p

Well lindybear, that would be even better than my idea.

Pugs are adorable.

The only thing I’ll say, Lilith, is that there is a reason there isn’t a solo queue SPvP tournament, and it’s because everyone is going to get frustrated with the weakest link in their party, and even if they’re good sports about it, they’re going to feel like they are wasting their time or not waste their time and quit the tournament or act out and ruin it for the team. At the end of the day, no one in those groups will ever play the tournament a second time around.

I don’t necessarily know if there’s a good solution for that, or if we maybe just need to grind it into peoples’ heads that it’s just the way it is.

The only other thing I really dislike about a tournament like this is that it’s so RNG-based. What if some group rolls a bunch of pros? They’ll clean house on a bunch of pub-rife groups. Is that fun to watch / participate in?

Create the random teams 1 hour before the tournament. No practice. That way, if people fail, or find they are paired with hopeless noobs, at least they won’t feel disheartened that they wasted weeks of practicing. It’s a 1 day event and it could be fun, I’m for it

Just throwing it out there. What about normal Pick up rules?

As in sports. Team captains, they pick players for the teams and then go.

Sign ups, get total number of participants, pick some captains, they pick players in order, this way good players get picked up evenly across the teams, then the unknowns will be thrown in.

Part of the challenge will be leading the team (and keeping your cool) while also going through quickly. Normal Meta speed run tactics may not win out over more controllable and consistent PUG tactics.

Do the “draft” a day ahead, giving the teams a day to practice/discuss. Announce the limited dungeon path selection. This way they can do a tour of the paths and get a general strategy they feel comfortable with.

In the end, best case someone wins, worst case the inexperienced players get a little mentoring.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The only thing I’ll say, Lilith, is that there is a reason there isn’t a solo queue SPvP tournament, and it’s because everyone is going to get frustrated with the weakest link in their party, and even if they’re good sports about it, they’re going to feel like they are wasting their time or not waste their time and quit the tournament or act out and ruin it for the team. At the end of the day, no one in those groups will ever play the tournament a second time around.

I don’t necessarily know if there’s a good solution for that, or if we maybe just need to grind it into peoples’ heads that it’s just the way it is.

The only other thing I really dislike about a tournament like this is that it’s so RNG-based. What if some group rolls a bunch of pros? They’ll clean house on a bunch of pub-rife groups. Is that fun to watch / participate in?

You make great points, many I hadn’t considered and that’s why I posted asking. But I’m just trying to figure out why an advertised PUG tournament (which implies RNG and the like) would be hurt by RNG.

It’s impossible to please everyone… but that’s why there’s the elite tournament. Players who do not have a static team or elite guild often can’t get a group to compete with. Having a tournament that gives the most fair shot that is possible for a solo pug is probably the only way some people could ever compete in something like a tournament.

A player should not go into a tournament like this and expect to have the best players in the game. If they aren’t okay with that I don’t know why they’d sign up.

@Nyspar, I agree but I prefer 15 minutes of them knowing. Less time, more pug like!

Could be fun to have a sort of “maximum one class per dungeon” rule, so as to encourage more fun group compositions.

What if we could come up with some self rating system 1-5 and hope for both honesty and self-awareness? Then try to balance groups to have a diverse set of abilities.

Alternatively, maybe a series of questions… What is the fastest time you have completed dungeon path X? What traits would you use for boss Y? Can you solo Lupi or Subject Alpha or some other bosses? (Obviously these are hard to come up with but with some thought might help indicate level of proficiency).

Bottom line is it would be helpful to try to find some rating system to help make balanced teams so every team is roughly in the same place.

Jerus.4350:

Just throwing it out there. What about normal Pick up rules?

As in sports. Team captains, they pick players for the teams and then go.

Sign ups, get total number of participants, pick some captains, they pick players in order, this way good players get picked up evenly across the teams, then the unknowns will be thrown in.

Part of the challenge will be leading the team (and keeping your cool) while also going through quickly. Normal Meta speed run tactics may not win out over more controllable and consistent PUG tactics.

Do the “draft” a day ahead, giving the teams a day to practice/discuss. Announce the limited dungeon path selection. This way they can do a tour of the paths and get a general strategy they feel comfortable with.

In the end, best case someone wins, worst case the inexperienced players get a little mentoring.

I think I wouldn’t want to force people to dedicate more than 1 day to it because of RL time constraints and other issues. I don’t really like the idea of the teams being chosen that far in advance…. because in my mind (which in other words is of course open to discussion for those interested in organizing it) it’s supposed to be a less serious pug adventure. I’d like to see how a player can shine through the others and pull a team through an event. Those are my thoughts.

IMO the teams and selected paths should be announced as close to the event start as possible to keep the random group spirit.

I see what you’re saying, but honestly that sounds more frustrating than fun to me. Inconsistent expectations on how the encounter will be approached is the biggest frustration to me. Even running with different guilds I’m often left going “argggg” throughout it as they do something different than what I’m use to.

So I’d want at least 5-10 minutes prior to each path to go over the intended strategies. Will we be stealthing? where? will we be pulling the SQ into a corner? Ice bow? Fear me? Fight in the middle? etc. For most encounters there are multiple strategies and just being on the same page would make it bearable where just “grab 5 and go” well… naw, not really interested in trying to run for speed in those situations I’m just going to get mad.

And then I still agree with Rising on the random issue. Decent chance of super groups or the opposite. I think the picking teams could happen even that morning, give us a few minutes to go over strats before each run and we’d be ok, I just figured a day for practice wouldn’t be bad either but you make a good point with time constraints.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

hybrid.5027:

I’ll be happy to help you with any advice you desire to make organizing it easier.

Any ideas on requirements on entry? (I’m at a loss for what could be a decent enough metric)

I would think about some captaincy system where you have people from speed clear guilds or [noob] mentors as captains and then fill the rest of the teams in with literally anyone who applies. This way at least one person knows the dungeons.

I would open up registration to anyone who can commit to the date and time. Make an EU and NA side. Randomly distribute the entrants to the captains the morning of the event.

This sounds like an interesting idea, but I too believe that it might end up as one team steamrolling the others because of a good roll.

Not really a dugeon person, although this did sound interesting. I basicly only have one character though so I wish you all the luck

Edit: if I had to rate myself out of 10 ( 1 being " noob " and 10 being " zerk, zerk, speed, speed ")
I would give myself a 4.

I dont really know cm very well and as for arah.. well Ive just played follow the leader with family and friends. I do remember some of the minor bosses tbough.

Sarah

Lilith Ajit.6173:

snip

Y u no quit?

Edit: Nevermind.
:c

What about having it based on the actual players, and not the team? At the end of the run, everyone does a survey(monkey) that rates their teammates on a clear scale, but they can’t rate themselves?

- how well did they know their class?
- how well did they support the team?
- how well did they handle the oddities that always seem to arise in pug groups?
- etc.

Seems like a lot of work to setup, but it would be interesting to compete.

Jerus.4350:

So I’d want at least 5-10 minutes prior to each path to go over the intended strategies.

Yeah, I didn’t mean it like an instant start, but just not enough time to, uh, let’s say run the path with the group prior to the match. Time for a quick strategy overview and necessary equipment changes but nothing more.

TKiller.6829:

Jerus.4350:

So I’d want at least 5-10 minutes prior to each path to go over the intended strategies.

Yeah, I didn’t mean it like an instant start, but just not enough time to, uh, let’s say run the path with the group prior to the match. Time for a quick strategy overview and necessary equipment changes but nothing more.

Aye just take SEp3 for example.

Do we rush to first boss? kill trash right at where they spawn, bring them down the ramp? bring them to the boss? options.

First boss, Who has condi removal available? Fight in pug spot or up top?

Are we going to stealth down to the wall? Yolo? Mesmer portal?

Kill burning guy(don’t know many very different strats for him)

K, dredge cart, how do we want to handle it? what’s our rotation on projectile defense. SR after? Mesmer portal?

Enough time to plan out the run would be a minimum requirement imo otherwise I personally wouldn’t have any interest at all, going for speed while being a disorganized choatic run…recipe for frustration.

I like this idea. I think you should make certain requirements for people joining (zerk gear, basic tactics, etc.)! I also wouldn’t allow practice runs as you mentioned that you want it to be a PuG tournament. Classwise would I say that no team should have an advantage. Also wouldn’t I allow 2 or more players from the same guild per team. Maybe let players sign up as “Party Leaders“ and “Party Members“ ?

I like the idea quite alot and if time allows, I would offer my help here. Maybe we can get people from the bigger dungeonguilds into a “community organization“ team so every guild has someone or more to represent them ? Would be cool i think.

Just some thoughts, don’t /slap me please..

If I were to do this, I’d probably ask all the players some pre sign up questions that give a hint at their skill level / competence, and score them say out of 100 (some being fairly short answer, some being more open ended… but not too many questions). Also note guild membership of players. Scoring will still be somewhat arbitrary, but with a few decent quality open-ended questions, you can probably get people closeish in terms of their actual ability level.

Then write a program that matches non-guildmates up together in such a way as to create teams that are roughly even in terms of ‘score’. Throw in another criteria for at least 1 streamer per team. If multiple optimal team comps are found, have it pick one at random. Or add some other things to factor in, like class compositions. Just make it quick and easy to write the program given the data.

Those are your teams. It’s the only way to more or less put everyone on an even playing ground, and it’s way better than just random teams with not much more work. Instead of ‘who got the better players’ (which will still be a factor), it will be more like what team of randoms is capable of best working together to accomplish a common goal. I think this could make it actually fairly competitive, and fun for all participants who are up for such a thing. You might get a team of 2 fantastic players and 3 mediocre ones, but they might be competing versus a team of 1 above average, 3 average, and 1 mediocre player. Who can complete their path first? Who knows.

I’d probably say that ability to use mumble/ts/vent should be a requirement. Both listening and speaking. Otherwise, you’re just not going to get players willing to collaborate fully with their teammates. Maybe full exotic (rare? ugh) gear or better with non-terrible stat/sigil/runes, too (could accept less than ideal and just score lower, too). Maybe some questions as to their opinions on certain tactics to disqualify them, too (i.e. “if your team decides to stack to line of sight something, are you okay with that? what if your team decides to skip some mobs?” kind of deal).

I’d probably restrict the tournament to non-buggy paths that pugs can more often than not handle. And no Arah story. It’d kind of suck to watch say, CoF path 3 where both teams are wiping repeatedly during the 5 waves of mobs and simply cannot progress further, although the voice chat and non-terrible gear requirements might make CoF3 well within the average group’s capability, so it’s a bit of a gamble. Could always add an ‘after N wipes, the team with the furthest progression wins or if tied, they rematch on another path’. Or heck, instead of RNG paths, you could have each team pick a path, and then have a third (deciding in case of a tie) path picked by RNG, and just make it so that for their path selection, each team can only pick a certain path once.

Don’t over-complicate it. The more rules/categories/systems you implement the harder and less fun it is for you to organize and the results won’t be worth the effort.

hybrid.5027:

Don’t over-complicate it. The more rules/categories/systems you implement the harder and less fun it is for you to organize and the results won’t be worth the effort.

I agree. And any work a competitor has to do in order to register will deter many from participating (especially if the prize pool isn’t as big as prior tournaments). I’m fine with doing and running the tournament well and professionally but it’s meant for the fun of the competitors. If they need to take an SAT to register I think it will really dampen the fun.

Again these are just my opinions. Things are still in development.

GMB for shoutcasting.

J Eberle.9312:

GMB for shoutcasting.

Will you please?

If time permits, I don’t mind. We’ll see what happens lol.

Putting random people together, some of whom are more competitive than others, in a tournament with rewards has potential for inter-party toxicity.

Some people will have teamspeak, others won’t. Some people are going to want teammates to have certain professions or builds, some will insist on playing their main, etc.

While I doubt you’re going to get people who insist on playing healing builds and killing every mob, I fear there’d be some problems.

Where do I sign up?

I love brainstorming. If RNG is a concerning factor, then how’s about going wild with RNG?

Firstly, since it’s a PUG, the victory of this competition depends much on the individual skills, leadership and social interaction. I would suggest shifting the prize to focus on exceptional individuals. For instance, winners are entitled MVPs (Most-Valuable Players) and/or Audience-choice MVPs.

Secondly, RNG is only fair when it’s truely random (imho). Make it a solo challenge! The format would change to something similar to Musical Chairs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_chairs):

• Let’s say, there are 20 participants randomly divided into 4 groups.
• In the first round, 4 groups compete in the same dungeon path. The slowest group will get eliminated.
• After the first round, the remaining 15 players get shuffled into new 3 groups.
• In the second round, the slowest group loses out.
• In the last round, the remaining 10 players get shuffled again and compete as in two new groups.
• The victorious group will be named MVPs. They deserve it for lasting through this pugging mayhem.
• 5 more Audience-choice MVPs will be rewarded to excellent players of the failing pugs. Their groups may have lost but their great effort of carrying their party members should be recognized and rewarded.

Thirdly, this tournament is simply for a refreshing fun. Based on my history, I have been pugging with quite a lot of elite guilds and players. I have witnessed plenty of hilarious fails as well surprising comebacks when people adapted to a lesser experienced player like me. Then I start to notice what sets a legendary player from good ones, and group players from solo ones.

I love that idea Iris, The individual is rewarded for his frustration and coming through the chaos still shining.

We can totally have more than one dungeon path per round and tally the scores. Smart people having experiences with their previous group members may want to devise strategies to help their current group counter-play the others. I think it’s fun, too. I know some are really into theory-crafting.

Storm crow had mentioned that, Iris and I really liked the idea, except we will have the problem of “who is the streamer”? Or would you lower to randomness and each remaining streamer would not be able to group together?

Unless we required everyone to be able to stream… but I think that’s a limiting requirement.

I propose that each registrant should indicate their ability to stream when signing up. Ideally, we want to have at least 6-7 streamers in a 20 people pool. Then we just have to roll the dice/shuffle over and over until we get at least one streamer in a group.

Maybe, giving a bonus for ‘streaming’ in the participant prize :>

I might have misread but how exactly does this idea of a tournament eliminate RNG?

GiannisPapapa.4961:

I might have misread but how exactly does this idea of a tournament eliminate RNG?

It doesn’t eliminate RNG. Staying true to its name, it embraces the chaos of pugging and rewards people who make it a good sport.